While preparing for my trip to Poland, several thoughts were going through my mind, One being that I was embarrassed to say I knew very little about Poland other than Polka, sausages and vodka.
Many friends have asked, What is there to do in Poland? To be honest I had no answers. Having lived in the US for many years now where one seems to hear very little world news, I had no idea what to expect. So I began my research. We are flying into Warsaw -The largest city and the capital of Poland, and Central European centre of culture and business. My excitement for Shelley and her Olympic quest very quickly seemed slightly insignificant in the shadow of the history we were about to be absorbed in…….
The velodrome is located in Pruszkow . Pruszkow is the largest and most industrialized district in Warsaw. The city is inhabited by approximately 55,000 citizens, while the Prushzkow poviat has a population of 135,000. The city is located within the Aowicz - Blonie Plain on the river Utrata.
The first written records referring to to the village of Pruszkowo date back to 1415. Zbików one of the districts of the city is known since the 13th century.
The Prushzkow region is also the site of concentration camp Dulag 121.
From 6th September to 10th November almost 650 thousand civilians had been imprisoned in the Dulag 121 camp, from which they were transported to the Soviet Union, Germany and concentration camps in Auschwitz, Mathausen and Stutthof. This is history most of us have read in books or seen in movies. Its going to be quite something to stand where so much pain and suffering transpired.
Well the trip started off with a flight out of San Francisco. Shelley and I met and were joined by Daniel. The flight was full. We were all seated together for the trip to London Heathrow. Better to be squashed next to people you know.
The flight was uneventful, watched movies and read, we didn’t sleep much.
Arrived at LHR with about 3.5 hrs to kill. Had breakfast and then hung out in the recliner chairs.
Next leg to Warsaw… food on the plane was a massive dense brick like bread roll with a piece of thin of cheese inside and some sort of ketchup. A belly bomb that I couldn’t touch. A bumpy 2.5 hr flight of which I slept about 1.5 hrs.
Arrived in Warsaw, it had been snowing that morning. Very cold. Jim picked us up. Fun drive to hotel, burned some rubber. The weather was grey and so were the sites on the 20 minute trip to our accommodations.
Arrived at hotel, the Ideal. I went to check in fortunately they had my reservation in order, well almost, missing a night but we will figure it out.
Time to build bikes. Daniels bike did not arrive yet. Fortunately his race bike is already here somewhere. I helped Shelley build her bikes. USAC mechanic arrives later. Then off to the track for the 4pm training session.
The velodrome is less than a year old, fairly basic facility, very fast track. Everyone was spinning out their travel legs. Shelley was pretty excited when Kluge joined her paceline!
Polish / Italian restaurant for dinner. The food was quite good and was nicely presented…a bit overdone actually, the soup bowl was sitting on 2 plates with napkins folded between the layers…quite a production! Back to the hotel to catch up on blogging. Slept like a log…apparently I sounded like I was sawing logs the first few minutes of my sleep! Oops, sorry!
Breakfast with Polish techno consisted of Polish sausages (yes, hot dogs), pressed meat, cheese, mushrooms, cereal and fruit.
Back to the track for 2pm session.
Daniels race bike showed up. But not the bike we had traveled with. Taylor sported the new USA pursuit skinsuit with built in nitrous booster. And later that day reckoned his pork loin smelled like Poland.
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